TEMPE, AZ - OCTOBER 4: FILE PHOTO Safety Pat Tillman #40 of the Arizona Cardinals looks on during a game against the Oakland Raiders at the Sun Devil Stadium October 4 1998 in Tempe, Arizona. Tillman, a U.S. Army Ranger and former Arizona Cardinals strong safety was reportly killed in Afganstan while serving as an Army Ranger. Tillman, 27, enlisted in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, choosing to walk away from a 3-year, $3.6 million contract extension with the Cardinals. (Photo by Todd Warshaw/Getty Images)

Where Men Win Glory

By Jon Krakauer

(Doubleday; 383 pages; $27.95)

When Pat Tillman died in Afghanistan as a U.S. soldier in 2004, he normally would have been one more near-anonymous addition to the body count related to the invasions of the remote mountainous nation and its shirttail war-torn relative Iraq.

Tillman, however, was not just another soldier. He had given up athletic renown and a huge salary as a professional football player to enlist for combat. He had left his beloved nuclear family behind, except for his brother Kevin, who enlisted simultaneously. Pat Tillman had also chosen to separate himself from his new wife, Marie, even though he knew it would cause misery for her.

As many, perhaps most, readers of this review will know, the U.S. military and the White House propaganda machine of George W. Bush portrayed Tillman, a San Jose native, as a hero shot dead by evil enemy forces who want to destroy the American way of life. It is also well known today that the White House/military portrayal was a lie, that Tillman had been accidentally killed by a fellow soldier - another in a succession of so-called friendly fire deaths.

The amount of news coverage and editorializing about Tillman's death has been so extensive that any author weighing in with a book five years later faces a gigantic challenge to disclose fresh material and fresh context. The challenge becomes greater given "Boots on the Ground by Dusk," an interesting, informative book with Tillman's mother, Mary, as the author, published last year.

Furthermore, Jon Krakauer is a celebrity author because his previous four books, especially "Into the Wild" and "Into Thin Air," found such vast audiences. Being a celebrity author beats being a mostly unknown author, but the celebrity obviously heightens expectations.

Has Krakauer succeeded with the Tillman book? For readers who know next to nothing about Tillman's 28 years of life and his death, an undiluted yes. It is the first deeply reported book about Tillman by a first-rate journalist - the author had access to Tillman's journals, which go back to his teenage years - and it is certainly a sensible place to start learning about the cause celebre. For readers who have consumed lots of the previous coverage, a diluted yes.

Why a diluted yes? Because until Page 274, when Krakauer begins presenting the details of Tillman's death, the text covers lots of familiar ground, repeats the cornerstones of Tillman's mostly exemplary character way too often, and - while well written at the sentence and paragraph levels - is structured awkwardly; Krakauer shifts without smooth transitions between his protagonist's year-to-year development as student-athlete and world events, especially in Washington, Afghanistan and Iraq.

After Page 274, the narrative is far more focused - on the craven coverup of the friendly fire death and the various attempts to expose the coverup. The focus benefits the narrative drive and yields information that will quite likely feel fresh to readers.

I especially appreciated the context Krakauer brings to government-military dissembling through the decades.

For example, comparing the Tillman propaganda to that surrounding the military's so-called rescue of U.S. soldier Jessica Lynch from Iraq, Krakauer writes, "The Jessica Lynch hoax worked so well, in fact, that the White House would recycle the same tactic thirteen months later, almost move for move, when it was confronted with another series of potentially disastrous revelations. Just as before, a fictitious story about a valiant American soldier would be fed to the media in order to divert attention from a rash of disquieting news."

An especially welcome contextual passage involves friendly fire deaths, which Krakauer posits ought to be considered inevitable. "Chaos is indeed the normal state of affairs on the battleground, and no army has figured out a way to plan effectively for, let along alleviate, the so-called fog of war. When the military is confronted with the fratricidal carnage that predictably results, denial and dissembling are its time-honored responses of first resort."

Because of Krakauer's reporting, maybe a larger percentage of U.S. voters will sicken of the government's lies, and demand increased truthfulness.